Bideford College collaboration

About this collaboration

One important aspect of empowering children in their learning journey is to provide them with an increasing understanding, through Key Stages 1 and 2, of how to work scientifically. A good grounding in this assists a confident transition into secondary school science. With this in mind, we have developed a collaboration with Mr Muir, who works as a science teacher at Bideford College and is Stage 3 coordinator for the college's science faculty. He has kindly offered to act as a consultant in the development of our outdoor science projects.

Energising the curriculum

Mr Muir has some fantastic ideas relating to learning science outside and he is very enthusiastic about our projects. So far we have discussed: having our own butterfly enclosures, hatching caterpillars of native butterflies and observing them transform to then release them into the woodland when grown; investigating the impact of PH levels, light levels and soil composition on the rate of growth of plants in our new polytunnel; and using quadrants to learn how to estimated the total number of daisies on our playing field.

Transitions

This important collaboration helps inform our science projects by ensuring the focus and content of our outdoor based science provision is not only curriculum based, but supports learning in a number of crucial scientific concepts needed to excel at secondary school. Our projects will be designed to encourage the use of prediction and the formulation of a hypothesis, accurate data collection, data analysis and presentation.